Average everyman kid Will Kidman is trying to survive high school. He's
in love with a girl who dates a huge jerk (shocking), and he's also
part of a family of werewolves. When does a kid get a break?

Is it good movie?

I remember seeing the first Howling film when I was a kid of maybe 8 or
9 and it scared the ever-loving crap out of me. I still don't even know
if I could rightly tell you what it was about, but I know that there
weer people who looked like they were in a lot of pain changing into
werewolves and tearing people up. That was all I needed to know.

As any horror fan knows, they went on to make a whole bunch of Howling
flicks, and for the most part I think it's safe to say that they aren't
very good. Now I admit that I'm not the biggest werewolf guy, but these
movies really go all over the place. Eventually, they must have stopped
making money because it's been awhile since we've seen a new entry in
the series.

unfortunately for any fan of the series, this isn't a return to form.
No, we live in a world where Twilight exists and money talks. So now,
we have another lame twilight clone. As if Twilight wasn't bad enough
as it is (and although I know it's so cool to hate Twilight, believe
me..if it had any merit, I wouldn't rip on it), now we have a
once-ballsy horror franchise simply slapping its name on a lame teenage
drama.

First, I don't know why this movie is reated R. It exists solely for
the Twi-hards and Vampire Diaries kids. Yet, they try to slap some lame
ass cut-away deaths and gore and stuff like that. I'm all for
nastiness, but this is NOT a movie that horror fans will dig, so why
bother? why not just sanitize it altogether so that the kids won't have
bad dreams? Because I can tell you that some bloody werewolf claw
manglings aren't enough for me to wade through this again.

If I have to give some props, I'll say that the werewolves themselves
look cool because amazingly, they're not CGI (although of course, the
transformation scenes are). They're big, practical badasses and looks
pretty great. Unfortunately though, you don't see them nearly enough
and when you do see them, the hasty editing takes away from the fun.
Oh, and they have these weird long tails..but I digress. The flick also
does a good job of making it seem as though Will can't trust anyone,
and he has trouble discerning between who is a monster and who isn't.
That's done pretty well.

So what else do you want to know about the movie? The whole thing is a
cookie-cutter model of stuff you've seen before. The lame kid has
newfound power (complete with "hey I don't need my nerd glasses
anymore" scene), loves the girl who doesn't realize she's with a huge
idiot, confronts and ruins the bad guy, looks cool in front of people
who misjudged him and deals with hilarious beautiful people villains
who try to mess with his mind and such. There's nothing to really say
about the cast- they're all too old to be in high school and just
handsome looking. Landon Liboiron is so-so as our hero and Lindsey
Shaw's Eliana love interest is as good as it could be, really. It's the
material that's the problem here.

This movie feels like it could have been on the WB network and served
as a nice, lame one-off for the kiddies. As it stands, the story is
pedestrian, the gore is present but not enough for real horror fans and
there are no real standout performances. This one isn't worth much
unless you're watching it with your young kids.

Audio is pretty alright too,
coming in TrueHD 5.1 and
hitting all the right notes in the right places.

The Extras

There isn't much to report from the extras front, there's a ccommentary from writer/director Joe Nimziki
and actress Lindsey Shaw, which is somewhat lively and both seem
good-natured. I won't lie though, I couldn't get through the whole
thing as they tend to narrate a lot of the action.

There's also a 30 minute Making of,
which unfortunately falls into the typical glad-handing, friendly
complimenting of the cast and crew instead of showing how the film was
really made. And I'm not sure if it was just my setup (I don't think
so), but the audio seemed out of sync for this. Weird.

Other than that, a Storyboard Gallery
rounds this out. Does anyone love the same old stuff on their discs or
what?

Last Call

There's nothing remarkable or memorable about The Howling: Reborn. It
could be an extended pilot for a tween drama and besides sporting some
decent looking werewolves (think Dog Soldiers), there's nothing new or
exciting here. A definite pass for anyone over the age of 15 or so.